Slashdot Mirror
Two More Executives Are Leaving Uber, Drivers May Unionize (nytimes.com)
First the resignations. "The beliefs and approach to leadership that have guided my career are inconsistent with what I saw and experienced at Uber," the company's former president told Recode on Sunday, announcing his resignation. "The departures add to the executive exodus from Uber this year," writes The New York Times. An anonymous reader quotes their report.
Brian McClendon, vice president of maps and business platform at Uber, also plans to leave at the end of the month... Raffi Krikorian, a well-regarded director in Uber's self-driving division, left the company last week, while Gary Marcus, who joined Uber in December after Uber acquired his company, left this month. Uber also asked for the resignation of Amit Singhal, a top engineer who failed to disclose a sexual harassment claim against him at his previous employer, Google, before joining Uber. And Ed Baker, another senior executive, left this month as well.
Jones left Uber after less than six months, though McClendon's departure is said to be more amicable. "Mr. McClendon, in a statement, said he was returning to his hometown, Lawrence, Kansas, after 30 years away. 'This fall's election and the current fiscal crisis in Kansas is driving me to more fully participate in our democracy -- and I want to do that in the place I call home."
In other news, the Teamsters labor union plans to start organizing Uber's drivers into a union, after a Washington judge rejected Uber's attempt to overturn a right-to-unionize ordinance passed by the city of Seattle.
Jones left Uber after less than six months, though McClendon's departure is said to be more amicable. "Mr. McClendon, in a statement, said he was returning to his hometown, Lawrence, Kansas, after 30 years away. 'This fall's election and the current fiscal crisis in Kansas is driving me to more fully participate in our democracy -- and I want to do that in the place I call home."
In other news, the Teamsters labor union plans to start organizing Uber's drivers into a union, after a Washington judge rejected Uber's attempt to overturn a right-to-unionize ordinance passed by the city of Seattle.
Alternatively, once a company is circling the drain, the most skilled employees who can get jobs easily elsewhere are the first to jump. The plodders go down with the ship.
Having witnessed the rise and now beginning of the fall of the company it's really amazing how at so many points they've done the bad or nefarious thing.
They basically lied about what the purpose of the app was, calling it a ride-sharing service when it's a taxi service.
They lied about the profitability of working for them, and doubled-down by getting people into paying for cars that they had no business buying and arguably couldn't afford because their incomes did not match the advertisements.
They lied and operated their unlicensed taxi service in places where this is illegal.
They've made efforts to avoid investigators into their illegal passenger livery practices.
They've attempted to call their drivers contractors while forcing them into working models that demonstrate that they're employees.
They've essentially stolen technology developed by others in an attempt to jumpstart their self-driving car business.
I get that in many cases existing taxi services aren't so great. On the other hand many of the laws governing taxis and sedan services are reactionary to some bad thing that happened and demonstrated a need to regulate for passenger safety. Perhaps some of what Uber and its ilk have come up with may end up as part of future regulations; the idea of determining the fare based on computer mapping is not a bad one and could be added to existing services if there was a strong enough interest.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
You're ignoring the massive subsidation being done by the hoodwinked drivers. In South Africa the average Uber driver makes about R1400 per week. It is physically impossible in South Africa for the amount of driving you have to do to make that - to fuel and maintain a vehicle for less than R2000 per week. That's assuming the car was bought for cash.
Their workers are actually operating at a loss. And the company is getting away with it because badly educated (often barely literate) drivers don't realize the maintenance costs - especially since those tend to come in the form of lump sum expenses months down the line.
I don't have numbers for other countries but the odds of it being different elsewhere are somewhere between zero and fuckall.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
It's very simple - if you are asking people to work unpaid overtime - you're an asshole. If there is too much work for the current people to do in 8 hours a day - then you're obligated to your share-holders to hire more workers, NOT to overwork the current staff.
Your supposed to meet demand WITHOUT being a dickwad.
Unions are one of the key ways we try to ensure a company that needs 16 hours of work done a day hires TWO people instead of just one (which actually CREATES jobs by preventing over-work of the existing staff). Frankly if your company needs to operate 24/7 and you have less than 3 people per role then you're an asshole who deserves to be out of business (in order to open up the market for a non-asshole company).
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
There's a huge difference between "sometimes when it's an emergency" and "all the time" - trouble is that "all the time" is the norm when unions are not there to prevent it.
More importantly - on those occasions when the company requires me to fix their bad management by working overtime, I demand the right to get paid double-time for doing so. All people deserve that. You take away my time with my daughter -you had better compensate me for that - double.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
>There are plenty of people who haven't figured out how much money they're going to end up spending on vehicle maintenance as a result of all that extra driving.
The IRS mileage rate is supposed to be an average cost for operating a vehicle. It is 53.5 cents per mile. Uber pays about twice that per mile in San Francisco. So if you can go at 60 MPH you'll be making about 30 bucks an hour, which is not bad for unskilled labor.
(1) You're assuming all miles and hours are 'billable', while in reality you would be driving empty towards a pickup and waiting for the next pickup. :). But even if you drive only on highways that allow those speeds, your average speed is going to be much lower, probably closer to 30MPH for realistic cases.
(2) 60MPH in San Francisco is going to get you some pretty bad fines most of the time
So, let's assume you spend every hour waiting for 10 minutes, driving 30MPH to the pickup for 10 minutes, and driving a customer at 30MPH for 40 minutes, your average hourly gross income is 20$ (40/60*30*1$) and your expenses are $13.375 (50/60*30*.535), giving you a real income of under 7$ per hour. Good luck finding a house and food for that in SF area...
I think you're seriously overestimating the strategic thinking capabilities of the people behind Uber. They haven't, up until recently, had even an R&D interest in developing driverless cars, and there is little chance they can realistically compete with Tesla, Ford, Google, VW, etc, even if they could raise another couple of billion in cash to burn. The likelihood of them coming from behind and beating the others to a viable driverless car solution is zero.
Further, what exactly do they have that will maintain their market position? An app? How easy is it for Google to turn the 'book Uber' button in google maps into a 'book google car'? If anything, they have worse than nothing - they are beholden to the company that is well ahead of them in the technology they desperately need to have a viable business model.
What I think Uber has been for quite a while now (granted, I don't think this was the original plan) is a financial bubble milking machine. Unless the board is actually delusional, the only viable strategy behind them entering the driverless car development race was to keep the IPO price at stupid levels. And if it wasn't for the PR disasters coming out of Uber on an almost weekly basis now, they would have been obscenely successful in achieving this.